"No one wants to watch a video that's exactly the same as what they just read," Zena Barakat, a video producer at the Times, said in a phone interview with Mashable on Wednesday. "The idea was to do a video that can stand alone, but also talks to the column."

Several weeks ago, Ian Chillag, who produced the audio for the video, interviewed the author of this week's column, writer Steven Petrow. He was in search of extra details about Petrow's essay, which chronicles his experiences with a $6,000-a-year matchmaking service. Chillag discovered an interesting lead-up story: That is, what spurred Petrow, after years of deliberation, to finally sign up for the service. He took this story to animator Xaver Xylophon to produce the video above, which took four weeks to animate and is narrated by the author himself.

In this instance, Barakat says the lead-up was the most interesting to tell visually, but that won't always be the case.

"Many Modern Love essays, of course, have more to the story than can be told in 1,500 words, and its wonderful to have this other way of adding to the written narrative," Daniel Jones, the Modern Love editor, wrote in a follow-up email to Mashable. "I think readers will appreciate hearing the writer's voice and allowing more to be told, though the animation is really it's own thing."

Modern Love won't be the only column to get its own video add-on. Rebecca Howard, the head of video production at the Times, says that as the paper builds out its video strategy, it is looking at popular columns and journalists that could benefit from the addition of "sight, sound and motion." The team decided to start with Modern Love because the "intimate nature" of the essays lend themselves naturally to video, she says.

The Times has launched a number of other video series in recent weeks, most recently Frugal Traveler. The organization is also working on a series with food columnist Mark Bittman.

Howard says the company is seeking out sponsorships for many of its series. "It really gives brands the ability to get more connected on site," she says.

Update: This story was updated to reflect that Ian Chillag, not Zena Barakat, interviewed Steven Petrow for the series and that it took four weeks to animate, not five.

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